New Years Eve

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There are a million people out there who haven’t had the new year come yet. Billions of us. All have some feeling of hope or loss or depression or gratitude. Here in Hawaii where there are many on vacation the air is filled with the heaviness of night and plumeria, sorrow and breathtaking joy, expectation and loss, fellowship and loneliness. The evening plays out against a sky of purple bruised by the day and backlit by the lost moon. The New year….what will it bring? To so many of us so much has been lost and so much is unknown. Our world is as fragile as the frangipani leaf which turns brown at the touch of a human hand or the monkey fruit which promises sweetness but tells a falsehood. I see the many families here on the beach: some who are young and adoring of their children and some with old fathers on their second or third set of children who seem desperate to see the horizon believing it will hold the youth they lost some time ago. There are couples who touch with tenderness and couples who never touch at all. The evening spreads out in front of all the world and unites us with its darkness. If we reach out a hand we can find comfort yet some of us rarely do. Families don’t always teach us safety and we have to find it on our own wearing miner’s caps with lights and bearing torches into the darkness. The journey into the underworld has a reward which we can savor bit by bit if we remind ourselves of this reward. It’s joy and light and comfort is there for all of us. Set a resolution to keep the light in your mind’s eye and follow that path. In this life you can either be joyful or sorrowful and the joyful have more fun which is what the Dali Llama says we should aspire for.That’s my message to all of those I love. Have fun!